The Pentagon is touting its ability to find and kill senior al Qaeda leaders wherever they are, announcing that in one week in October, U.S. drone strikes took out core leaders in three countries.
The three strikes in three days show the transregional nature of the al Qaeda threat, Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said on Wednesday.
“Al Qaeda doesn’t recognize borders when they conspire to commit terrorist attacks against the West,” Davis said. “And we continue to work with our partners and allies to find and destroy their leaders, their fighters and their cells that are planning attacks externally.”
Davis said an Oct. 17 strike near Idlib, Syria, killed Haydar Kirkan, who he called a “long-serving facilitator and courier” for the terrorist group in Syria.
“He had ties to al Qaeda’s senior leaders, to include Osama bin Laden himself, and he was al Qaeda’s senior terror attack planner in Syria,” Davis said.
On Oct. 21, Abu Hadi al-Bayhani was among a group of five al Qaeda fighters in the Arabian Peninsula militants killed in Yemen. His role was described as establishing havens from which to launch attacks against other countries.
The Pentagon believes it also killed two of al Qaeda’s most senior leaders in Afghanistan, Faruq al-Qatani and Bilal al-Utabi, in two separate strikes Oct. 23, but cautioned in that attack it’s not yet able to say for sure the two died.
“We are still assessing the results of those strikes,” Davis said “We are not able to confirm yet that those leaders were killed.”
